How Do Ordinary People Drive Change?
- Change doesn’t only come from famous leaders, it often starts at the community level, with regular people organising around everyday problems.
- Grassroots movements are powerful because they grow from lived experiences: housing, safety, discrimination, education, environment, labour rights.
Analogy
- If national movements are like storms, grassroots activism is like groundwater: slow, steady, and essential for long-term change.
Exam technique
- Always show how local action → wider change.
- This link earns highly in MYP essays.
1. Ordinary People Identify Problems First
- Grassroots movements begin when communities recognise a local issue that authorities ignore.
- Ordinary people often notice injustice sooner because they live with the consequences daily.
Example
- Flint Water Crisis (USA):
- Residents noticed strange smells, colours, and illnesses before officials admitted there was a problem.
- Parents, activists, and local scientists gathered evidence and pressured the government to acknowledge lead contamination.
2. Community Organising Builds Power
- People form neighbourhood groups, cooperatives, unions, student groups, or local committees.
- They hold meetings, create plans, train volunteers, and build local leadership.
Example
- South African civic associations (1980s):
- Communities organised tenant strikes, school boycotts, and neighbourhood patrols during apartheid.
- These actions weakened the system from the bottom up and supported national resistance.
Exam technique
- Use words like mobilise, coordinate, collective action: they show understanding of organisation.
3. Small Actions Add Up
- Everyday actions, petitions, door-to-door conversations, local protests, build momentum.
- Even small wins create confidence and attract more people.
Example
- Chilean neighbourhood organising against Pinochet (1980s):
- Local groups held small workshops and silent protests
- These grew into national plebiscite campaigns that eventually ended the dictatorship.
4. Grassroots Movements Give a Voice to Marginalised Groups
- People who are ignored by powerful institutions often depend on community action to make themselves heard.
Example
- Disability rights movement:
- Local disability groups lobbied for accessible ramps, transport, and education.
- These efforts built into national reforms like the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990).
Common Mistake
- Thinking only national leaders create laws.
- Many laws begin with years of grassroots pressure.
5. Community Action Uses Local Knowledge
- Ordinary people understand their neighbourhoods better than outsiders.
- Their solutions are more realistic, culturally appropriate, and sustainable.
Example
- Kenyan community health workers designed local HIV awareness programmes that worked better than top-down government messaging.
Common Mistake
- Expertise isn’t always in universities: sometimes it’s in the streets, markets, and homes of a community.
6. Grassroots Movements Pressure Governments and Institutions
- Communities use multiple strategies to push for change:
- local protests
- meetings with councillors or MPs
- petitions and campaigns
- boycotts of local businesses
- public testimonies and storytelling
- partnerships with journalists
Example
- Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Argentina):
- Ordinary women protested weekly to demand information on disappeared children under the dictatorship.
- Their persistence brought global attention to human rights abuses.
7. Grassroots Action Can Scale Up Into National or Global Movements
- Strong community movements often inspire regional or global solidarity.
Example
- Fridays for Future:
- Began with one teenager striking alone in Sweden (Greta Thunberg).
- Local school strikes spread globally as millions of students organised in their own communities.
Example
- Highlight the pattern: local issue → local action → national awareness → global movement.
8. Grassroots Action Builds Long-Term Change
- Even after media attention fades, communities keep working:
- building cooperatives
- improving local services
- creating support networks
- training new leaders
- These changes strengthen society from the ground up.
Example
- Community land trusts (e.g., in London, New York) fight gentrification by helping residents collectively buy and manage housing.
Common Mistake
- Focusing only on famous leaders and ignoring community actors.
- Forgetting that grassroots movements rely on organisation, not just frustration.
- Describing protests but not explaining how they scale into bigger change.
- Missing the cause-effect chain: local knowledge → organising → pressure → reform.
Case study
Standing Rock (2016): Indigenous Community Action
- Background
- The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the United States opposed the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
- The pipeline was planned to run near their reservation, threatening their water supply (the Missouri River) and sacred ancestral land.
- What injustice did ordinary people identify?
- Threats to clean water (“Water is Life”).
- Violation of Indigenous treaty rights.
- Lack of consultation with the community.
- Environmental risk to local ecosystems.
- How did the community organise?
- Tribal members set up peaceful resistance camps, becoming the centre of the protest.
- Youth runners organised a 2,000 km run to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness.
- Families, elders, and local leaders coordinated supplies, safety, and communication.
- What strategies did they use?
- Peaceful direct action: blocking construction sites, prayer circles, marches.
- Digital activism: livestreams and hashtags (#NoDAPL) spread the story globally.
- Alliances: environmental groups, veterans, and thousands of supporters joined the camps.
- Legal challenges: filing lawsuits arguing treaty violations.
- Government and corporate response
- Police used tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and mass arrests.
- Media coverage of repression drew national and international attention.
- The federal government temporarily paused the project in 2016, but construction resumed under a later administration.
- Outcome and long-term impact
- Although the pipeline was eventually completed, the movement:
- elevated global awareness of Indigenous rights
- strengthened environmental justice activism
- inspired new youth-led Indigenous movements
- increased scrutiny of pipeline projects across North America
- showed the power of community, culture, and solidarity
- Although the pipeline was eventually completed, the movement:
Self review
- Why are ordinary people often the first to recognise injustices in their communities?
- How does community organising turn small local issues into larger movements?
- Why is local knowledge important for designing effective solutions?
- How can grassroots activism pressure governments to respond?
- How do small actions at the community level create long-term change?
